A federal judge in Pennsylvania ruled today that the state’s law banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, bringing the number of state marriage amendments overturned in the federal courts this past year to twelve, according to this report by Think Progress. “We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history,” U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III wrote in Whitewood v. Wolf. Jones added:

The issue we resolve today is a divisive one. Some of our citizens are made deeply uncomfortable by the notion of same-sex marriage. However, that same-sex marriage causes discomfort in some does not make its prohibition constitutional. Nor can past tradition trump the bedrock constitutional guarantees.